Tim Peake and space station crew mates return to Earth

Astronomers using NASA and ESA X-ray space telescopes discover that PDS 456, an extremely bright black hole known as a quasar more than 2 billion light-years away, sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns.

Officials expect to delay next year’s launch of a European Mars orbiter and lander about two months — from January to March — to remove faulty pressure transducers from the landing craft’s braking system, the European Space Agency announced Friday.

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying Britain’s Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, parachuted to the flat grasslands of Kazakhstan on Saturday, returning home from a six month mission to the International Space Station.